Asa Fix
News Reporter

Colorado’s premier cycling event, Ride the Rockies, will celebrate its 25th Anniversary on June 12-19. The tour kicks off at the Mesa State College campus.
Ride the Rockies began in Grand Junction in 1986. Chandler Smith, tour director, and Elizabeth Norris, community relations coordinator, thought it would be a great idea to bring the seven day tour back to where it started.
Every June, 2,000 Ride the Rockies cyclists embark on a six or seven day bicycle tour of Colorado’s beautiful Rocky Mountains.
The ride is so popular that approximately 4,000 applications are received every year but only 2,000 riders are selected randomly in a lottery.
About 13 countries are represented in the tour and at least one person from every state in the United States of America participates.
Every year, Ride the Rockies receives extensive media coverage. Last year, the tour generated over 205 million media impressions through radio, television and print media, including extensive coverage in the Denver Post and KCNC News 4. It has also been featured twice on the NBC Today Show as well as in Bicycling Magazine and Adventure Cyclist.
The event has received many awards from state, national and international organizations. This year it was written about in the biggest cycling magazine as one of the best rides to go on in the nation, according to Norris.
On June 12, all the cyclists will come into town for registration and then later that night there will be a V.I.P. party at the Two Rivers Convention Center. On June 13 at 7:30 a.m., the opening ceremonies will take place and the tour will start from there. On the first day of the tour, cyclists will do a loop ride on the Colorado National Monument. Then the tour will go from Grand Junction to Delta, Delta to Ouray, then Ouray to Durango over Red Mountain Pass, Durango to Pagosa Springs, Pagosa Springs to Alamosa, and from Alamosa to Salida. The tour is different every year and this year it is a total of 532 miles.
Ride the Rockies benefits every town that it stops at.
“Half the percent of our proceeds go to charities and through the Denver Post community and the Ride the Rockies Race Program. We have local nonprofit organizations from each town we stop at during the tour that apply for grants. In each town we award one of the applicants with a five thousand dollar grant,” Norris said. “The tour will benefit Grand Junction and Mesa State College the most because, on average, each host town earned $250 thousand in a 24-hour period and we will be in Junction for two days.”
All the participants are responsible for purchasing their own food, so it’s a great fundraising opportunity for schools and non-profit groups to make or sell food. It’s also great for volunteers. Sodexo will also be catering the event.
“We are a very well known, supported, organized event for cyclists,” Smith said. “There are four of us organizers and we will be joined with 80 volunteers who will work the event and travel from town to town with us. We are very excited to start in Grand Junction and very appreciative of the town and college for accommodating us for a couple of days.”
u
ajfix@mesastate.edu